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Good morning everyone! I’ve got a new art journal page for you today, created using Basically Bare’s 5×7 Artful Journal. The watercolor pages are nice and thick and colors do not bleed through to the other side. I actually saturated this page with color.

Stamp the stars using embossing liquid and then emboss with silver powder.

Add a trunk cut from a piece of paper and color with a dark brown paint.

Die cut holly and snowflakes from cardstock. I painted the holly leaves and then embossed with clear powder. The snowflakes were embossed with silver powder.

Stamp Merry Christmas in black ink and then emboss with green embossing powder. Adhere everything to the page.

I outlined Merry Christmas with a white pen. I had also outlined the tree with a red paint pen but went back over it with a white pen. Next I outlined the holly leaves and snowflakes with a black Micron pen.

Finally, outline the page with a red paint pen.

You are done!

Looking for Basically Bare products? Just go to our Website and sign up for an account (you’ll need an account to view pricing). And yes, we do sell at retail.

Hi everyone. Today I have a quick tip on how not to have a white page to sit and stare at when you go into your studio to do some art journaling. I know that all that white space can cause some stress. Where to start? What medium to lay down? How to get from point A to point B, etc. etc. First, you start with a Basically Bare Art Journal. Any one of our three sizes will work. They are made with watercolor paper and are perfect for this application.

What I do is create what I call a Excess Paint Journal. It’s where I put all my leftover paint, mop up any sprays or mists, stamp my inked stamps until they are clean, clean off dirty stencils, etc. It’s easy to do and you can make some wonderful backgrounds.

On these pages, I just brushed on or mopped up excess paint and mists. You can see on the right where I slid in a dirty stencil, closed the journal, and allowed the watercolor paper to soak up the excess spray that were on them. Look closely and you can see some stamping where I cleaned off some stamps.

More pages. The one on the left is where I practiced some stamping and smeared on a bunch of excess paint I had on my craft mat. The one on the right is where I had a bunch of excess tinted texture paste and used it to stencil over some pages that already had some mists on them.

And yep, you can great some beautiful journal pages with those scrap pages you created. The background was created over a period of time just by adding excess paint, texture paste, and wet stencils. All I did was add a few fussy-cut stamped images, a sentiment, and highlighted random areas with white and black ink. Having the background already done made this project come together quickly. And there was no stress from staring at a white piece of paper.

Looking for Basically Bare products? Just go to our Website and sign up for an account (you’ll need an account to view pricing). And yes, we do sell at retail.

Hi everyone! I wanted to share some of the different ways I’ve decorated the covers of my Basically Bare Art Journals.

This is the front and back of one of my 6×9 watercolor journals.

I’m working on creating random backgrounds by adding any paint, mists, stencils, stamps, etc., that I might be trying or have left over after a project. I’m getting some interesting backgrounds to use as future journal pages whenever I turn this into a true art journal.

This is the front and back of one of my 5×7 watercolor journals.

I’m already using it as an art journal.

And these are the inside covers of the above journal.

What have YOU done in your journal lately? Do you use it to note special events in your life or as a daily diary? Maybe you use it as I do as either a way to create a specific project or as a place to put all your excess paint left on your craft mat after a project. Whatever you do with them, art journals are all about YOU.

Looking for Basically Bare products? Just go to our Website and sign up for an account (you’ll need an account to view pricing). And yes, we do sell at retail.

Good morning everyone! Marilyn here and today I have a project I created with a couple of our Mixed Media Cards for our Mixed Media Card Set.

I started out with the 3×4 acrylic card and stamped Lover’s Silhoutte from Technique Junkies using black StazOn. Next, I took one of the 4×6 cardboard cards and removed the top surface, leaving the corrugated cardboard showing. This I gesso’d then sprayed with Art Anthology Plush. To make the butterfly, I used the Sizzix BigZ Butterfly Die with Texture Fade. I then brushed on Art Anthology Juicy, Patience, and Plush.

I misted the entire thing (except for the acrylic) with Gold Fairy Dust and then added my sentiment, curtesy of Paper Artsy.

Looking for Basically Bare products? Just go to our Website and sign up for an account (you’ll need an account to view pricing). And yes, we do sell at retail.

Hi everyone! Marilyn here today to share one of Basically Bare’s great albums. For today’s project, I used the Oh So Mini Tabbed Album. This is a great ringed album and you can personalize it with your choice of a variety of materials (chipboard, felt, watercolor paper, and/or acrylic). For mine, I chose to go with all chipboard.

I used a Farm House 6×6 paper pad to cover all my pages.

I used mini Cabinet Card frames. and Found Relatives from Tim Holtz, and stickers from my stash.

When I first saw the “Wonky WIndows” mini album from the Basically Bare catalog’s Mixed Media Spiral-Bound Album section (page 2) here, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I have a large collection of turn of the 20th-century burlesque dancers and comediennes and thought the windows looked like the “peep holes” in an early burlesque house. So, away I went!

The album has a variety of materials used as pages – corrugated cardboard, frosted acrylic, canvas, chipboard, and cardboard. It’s fun to decide how to use each one.

I took the spiral binder off the pages so that I could move the color all the way to the edge of the pages – but you wouldn’t have to – I also found it easier to work on the pages as flat individual pieces rather than as an album. But again, that choice would be up to you. The Basically Bare album gives you a lot of options as to how you want to best use them to suit your own way of creating.

On the right side of this page, I made a mini-collage of naughty nineties ladies and used them on a Basically Bare medium sized dress form embellishment. These can be found on page 7 in the catalog’s Mixed Media Embellishments section. Remember, you’ll need to register in order to see the prices and place an order – but there’s no obligation to sign up!

There are three pages (frosted acrylic, canvas and chipboard) which do not have window cut into them. It is your choice whether to separate the wonky window pages with these “spacers” or do as I did, which is put them all together at the end of the album

I have to admit – I was looking forward to creating an all fabric transferred image-on-fabric collage on the canvas page – but I discovered my sewing machine must have been dropped in my recent move (darn those “Two Studs With a Moving Van” dudes!) and didn’t work. So I had to use regular fabric glue to put my images on the canvas. It worked beautifullly – and I did a little self-fringing of the canvas around the edges – but I missed being able to do some stitching for a change of pace!

For me, one of the fun things about the acrylic pages is to find a way to use both sides of the page without the back sides of the images on one side showing through on the others. It’s a fun, easy challenge – like a children’s puzzle on a paper placemat in family restaurant!

On my backpage, I chose to put a very brief history of burlesque – which actually started with Aristophanes (446-386BC) – so it’s true when they say there is nothing new under the sun! However, the bawdy ladies that we think of as burlesque dancers and comics came into popularity at the turn of the twentieth century.

Because I found this album so difficult to photograph, I made a very short (minute-and-a-half) video of the pages turning so that you can see the images peeking through the wonky windows. Hope you enjoy it! You can see it here.

I thank you for visiting – and I hope you enjoyed our brief little tour through the wonky window world of turn of the century burlesque with Basically Bare!

Pick up the Basically Bare products I used in today’s layout, and the full line of Basically Bare embellishments, albums, and more at www.basicallybare.com/shop. You will need to register in order to see the prices and place your order!

Good morning! I’ve been working with tags again since Basically Bare makes some truly awesome ones! This time, I worked with a couple of digital stamps from The Octopode Factory. The swap I was participating in was themed Chesire Cat. Weeelllll, me being like I am, I had to be a little quirky with my Cat.

Cool Kitty? The top one is on his way to a new home and I kept the bottom one for myself. So, why don’t you go grab some Basically Bare Tags and see what goodness you can come up with!

Hello all!! Happy Monday! Wendy here and I’m hoping you all had an awesome Easter with many good eats and treats along with lovely family time. Speaking of good eats and if you take lots of food pics (as I am guilty of doing)….how about capturing those many food pics in a mini book? I will vote my favorite mixed media album from Basically Bare is the Tiny Tabs Mixed Media Spiral Bound Album. It’s just the perfect mini size. Period. The album measures 5/1/4″ x 3 1/4″ tall.

Confession…I am THAT person who says “wait, I need a pic before we dig in”. Yes, I might grab your knife, fork and spoon for a foodie pic while you inhale the aroma. Even more so that dear hubby is an Italian + chef (ding ding ding) = foodie pic overload. Guilty. The best thing is dear hubby doesn’t mind one.bit and has even on occasion (multiple occasions) ask me, “amore, you want a pic before I put this in the oven?” [insert this brown girl blushing here] “ok, amore, if you ‘insist’. Ha! On a side note, many of you know my husband, Vincenzo (Enzo for short), is Italian from Southern Italy (the city of Ostuni near Naples). He had his own restaurant with 30+ years experience in Europe before moving to the States last November. The things you sacrifice for love… So, when I say real Italian food, it’s REAL. His momma Caterina taught him in the kitchen. His recipes are instinct without measurement and just beyond words for description. I pinch myself with luck.

So, what’s a girl to do with all the amazing foodie pics?! Yeah, Instagram’d, done and did, Ha! Hey, even better, let’s make a mini book! Fast forward, I dreamed of my foodie pics on my pages in my dreams instead of counting sheep.

So, I’m inviting you over for dinner as you check out my mini album “Good Eats”. You are allowed to sing at the table as dear hubby might serenade you in Italian song. Swoon.

I decided to leave the cover with the raw corrugated board to mimic a brown paper bag….clever, go ahead and applaud, thank you very much. Ha!

I printed out my photos using my Canon Selphy + a collage app (PicFrame) to squeeze about 4 pics per 4×6 photos sheet. Also, I went with a simple method of attaching my mini pics with a tiny stapler. I didn’t go too big with embellishments on this project as to keep it basic and the focus on the pictures.

I love the use of the acrylic page tab dividers found in the Tiny Tabs Mixed Media Spiral Bound Album and these dividers into my mini break up the monotony of photo pages. A bit of wording added on the tabs is a cool touch too.

Here are the rest of the pages in my mini book…

I hope you enjoyed the many courses of dishes at our table together!

Be sure to grab up online or ask for the Tiny Tabs Mixed Media Spiral Bound Album at your local crafty spot!

Hello all!! Wendy here and I’m back to share up a twist from the mini album approach today. I always like to bring an element of surprise to my mini books and art journaling. I’m currently using a 7 1/4″ x 8 1/4″ format for documenting my Project Life™. So, I like to go on the ‘mini’ version aside from the 12×12 format AND I like to include elements in my album besides just pages. The mix is a good thing. The ‘mini’ style works for me in my busy life instead of a larger format so I go with that flow.

So, this leads to my project today where I created a tag to insert into my album. I’ll punch a couple of holes into the tag later and it will be all ready to go into my album.

In this project, I’m featuring the really cool chipboard and canvas shapes from the Mixed Media Embellishments by Basically Bare. There are textures for everyone in these embellishments — acrylic, chipboard, canvas — all there for you.

I used an acrylic star from Mixed Media Embellishments (Celestial Shapes) and a chipboard and canvas heart (Hearts). There are so many limitless possibilities with these shapes. I altered the chipboard heart with paper, sanded/distressed and inked up to flow with the mood and colors for the rest of my tag.

I added an overlay of an acrylic star to the edge of the canvas and chipboard hearts. Then, I tucked in some sweet petite flowers along the edge of the canvas heart.

I added a couple of vintage photos along with some messy journaling and sketching. I love vintage, I love mixed media, and this tag is my creative mix of both loves.

Be sure to grab up online or ask for the Basically Bare Mixed Media Embellishments at your local crafty spot!